Day 4: What Goes Up Must Come Down

March 19th, 2011

Robertson to Goulburn
Distance: 107km
Total distance: 297km

I had a very good sleep last night. Certainly made a difference sleeping on a proper bed, and with a constant temperature of 26 degrees. Since I didn’t have to pack up my camping gears, I get to leave early at about 6.15am. I managed to get rid of my skin soreness by using multiple adhesive bandages on the affected skin. Sky was still dark and can get quite foggy at some stretch of the Illawarra Highway. The traffic was terrific and the gradient was mostly downhill. It started raining as I was approaching Exeter. I was having a good time riding so I didn’t stopped to put on my rain jacket. My first destination was Bundanoon which is about 38km from Robertson. I was aiming to reach there just in time for a hot breakfast.

One funny thing I noticed when riding passed farm animals is that they tend to stare at me like I’m some sort of martian. This happens every single time, there would be at least 2 or 3 animals in a herd that faces me initially, and then the rest just follows. As I was going downhill on some parts of the road, I moo-ed at some of the cattles just to poke fun at them.

I reached Bundanoon at 9 something to have a bacon and egg with toast breakfast at Ye Olde Bicycle Shoppe. This shop is one of a kind, as the interior are all bicycle-themed, in fact, they even have bicycles for hire from within the shop. Several customers walking pass my trike couldn’t resist checking out my trike. I rested in the shop for a good 45 mins before I continued my journey. I had about 60km left to go so I put on my rain jacket and pedalled away.

The subsequent journey was also fantastic, although not much of downhill. The road soon joins the Hume Highway, which is the main highway that connects Sydney and Melbourne. Traffic was busy as expected but the shoulder lane is wide enough to fit 3 trikes across. At this point I only had about 30km left and it was only noon, so I decided to stop by at a service centre for a meal break. Had Hungry Jacks burger for lunch and sat there for about 45 mins surfing the free wi-fi and relaxing.

The last 30km of my ride was mostly slight gradients but manage to complete it in 2 hours. Just when I was about to enter Goulburn town, I saw a Big4 caravan park and without hesitation steer into the park and get myself checked-in for a camp site. Big4 is a chain of caravan parks that usually provide a good range of facilities and its also pet free. The only downside to this is that it is usually more expensive than the average caravan park. I hit the 100km mark today, the first time on my trike and second time on a bike in general, so I figured staying in this luxurious caravan park is a decent reward for myself.

It was only 3pm when I reached the camp site, so I took my time to set up my tent and head to town to shop for food supplies. When I came back to have my dinner, I discovered that I have lost my diary! I must have left it at the motel last night but I called the motel only to be told that they didn’t find anything in the room. I felt frustrated at first but wasn’t going to let this incident spoil my tour. I took out my iPhone, sat in the dining area with my iPhone plugged into the AC outlet and did a brainstorm to recall memories for the past 4 days. Since I had 3G reception at that time, everything I wrote in my iPhone were automatically backed-up into my email account, so that gives me a real peace of mind. With the aid of the photos I took, it was surprisingly easy to recall the events in the past few days. Took about 1.5 hours to rewrite my diary but it was all worth it. The night was very cold, much colder than all the previous nights. Brrrrrr~~~~